Sheila Radley
Fate Worse than Death
Inspector Quantrill #5
$ 14.95
It's popular to contrast the grit and grimness of hard-boiled mystery fiction with the murder-in-the-little-English-village genre, widely assumed to feature roses and petunias and only the occasional bad seed. And yet no one knows the dark side of those verdant little villages better than Sheila Radley. Admittedly, Fate Worse than Death opens—on the sunniest day in half a century—with the news that someone has stolen Beryl Websdell's garden gnome. However, things get less sunny very quickly, as it becomes apparent that Beryl's daughter has also disappeared. Called in to handle the case, Inspector Quantrill and his deputy can't shake their conviction that the villagers are engaged in an unusually chatty conspiracy of silence, and that something rather ugly is lurking in the petunias.
"The traditional British procedural has taken a turn for the better with ... Miss Radley"—New York Times
Who's likely to like this: Fans of Deborah Crombie and Caroline Graham
2009 • Fiction/Mystery • 274 pages • ISBN: 9781934609392
